Tragedy of the commons

Eh, it is what it is.

I tend to make sure that what I consider my best giveaways are restricted to either my whitelist or certain groups where I think it would be most appreciated, however I also try and make sure that I give away some of the better games as public giveaways too.

I do limit my giveaways now though from the lowest levels as I have had too many problems with rule breakers (not that there aren't any at higher levels but the ratio seems better).

Ultimately when I have left over games it seems better to give them away on here and make someones day better than just sitting on them or maybe trying to trade them away.

Yet in most cases people just seem to stuff as many games in their backlog of which 95% remains un-played anyway

Well, that's why I became the second type you mentioned above.

There's no correlation between this and giving back though, some low levels users are very enthusiastic about playing their won games, while some high level users haven't touched more than a few of their wins (if any).

I can't see a problem. Thanks to knsys we have http://sgtools.info/ , it's very convenient, and you can set up any rule you like, in your case - limit entries by ratio, and you can make the rule as complex as you wish. This way both people who are bothered by people not giving back can filter those users from their giveaways, and the rest who don't care can giveaway games for everyone. And this as on top of having groups, whitelist and level restriction on SG itself.

Yet in most cases people just seem to stuff as many games in their backlog of which 95% remains un-played anyway

AKA Steam sales.

There is no way of fixing this, there will always be something wrong. If you want to have more control over your giveaways make them invite only, group, or whitelist. You can manually choose people who will get the link and give it to those who fit your criteria. Personally I'd use whitelist thingy for these kind of events because:
1) you have full control of who will enter the giveaway, there's no option someone will leak the link,
2) it takes only 2 clicks to add somebody to your WL so it's the quickest way.
Disadvatage of using whitelist fo events is that you cannot have a regular whitelist. Or you can leave the most trusted people on your WL and add new ones for the duration of event only. Up to you.

Well, doing an SGTools giveaway with the rule of 730 not in owned_games and 221100 not in owned_games and 578080 not in owned_games (does not own CS:GO, PUBG, or DayZ) seems to eliminate almost all of them, but private SGT giveaways are a tad exclusivist for the common SG user.

You know ... i 2 used to care about stuff like that ... people just hoarding keys for the sake of getting free shit and add +1 to their 5k games on steam ... or just idle them for the cards ... then i kinda stopped giving a fuck tbh.

Eventually you will either accept that they exist and just dont care ... leave like your friends did .... or look for means to avoid them as much as possible SGTools being 1 such way , even tho i dont really like the thing .

When there is free stuff involved , people come in hordes , just cause of that free tag added to it , regardless if they need the thing or not ^^

Just look how many people own the garbage Digital Suicide made .

For better or for worse, SteamGifts is now popular enough to attract all sorts of different people. If you feel the way you are, I feel like something is gotta give. You ever have to filter out unwanted people with SGTools, or accept that not every winner of your public giveaways is gonna be up to a scratch. And I'm not trying to judge or anything, but you can't have it both ways. I personally chose to stick with making public GAs, and I just add users that do not meet my personal criteria to the blacklist. That's it.

My giveaways activity is strictly limited to group/whitelist/private, as in I only create and enter these types of giveaways. Yet I am sure many only viewed my completed giveaways and thought, "Wow, what a leech - they only make private giveaways". Just putting this out there so that you understand that my point of view is one which does not meddle in public giveaways.

Personally, I don't believe there are any actual reliable ways to prevent what you described, unless perhaps if level requirements could be set as "XX in value in the past XX months" or such. Steamgifts has always, and will always be a website where the occasional "leech" is present, and I think that many of us have simply come to accept that and simply carry on with our activity in various ways to attempt to reduce the chances of stumbling across such a user. Take me for example, I've been making primarily private giveaways on the forum because I value the active community far more than random users who spend an hour every day to spam entries into public giveaways.

I think that in the end, we just choose to stay here despite the many inconveniences that come with being a Steamgifts user, probably because Steamgifts manages to do what other websites have tried and failed. It does what it is intended to do, and even with its many faults, it's still the most successful giveaway website out there.

No matter what you do, someone will always manage to find a way to gamble the system. Better to keep the system simple and use other tools like blacklists and SGtools to put some limits.

Do u think early those people could have no enough money to buy it for themselves?

I assume you would have a problem with me then?

I’d like to ask you some questions to initiate the discussion. What are your experiences, did you notice this type of user to?

Yes.

Are you bothered/annoyed by this type of winners?

No. Of course I prefer people playing or at least trying their wins and not just idle them for cards or +1, but ultimately they can do whatever they want as long as they follow the site rules.

Have you considered stopping with steamgifts or did you change what games you give because of this?

No.

Would you give more games back if you would win more often?

No. I give away games when I want or can do it. Winning more or less games won´t change that.

Should we have more means to select against people that are not willing to give back to the community?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And finally how would you reward or promote philanthropic sg users?

With a ¨thank you¨ and a spot on my whitelist. 🙂

Depends on the game. If it's garbage shovelware that I got from a bundle, I don't care who gets it; even someone farming cards from it or looking for a +1 in their library is getting more use from it than I ever would, and it's unlikely anyone would actually want it for playing purposes. If it's a game that's good and that I don't want, I tend to make the entrance level a bit higher to reward those who give back. I don't always do that, since I do want the games to be accessible for people who simply can't afford to get games that often, but usually I'll put in a required level. If it's a game that I love and want to gift to someone who I know will enjoy it, I hit up the whitelist.

Sometimes I'll also have two copies of the game I'm giving away and be on the lookout for someone who legitimately seems interested in playing it, and then pass it on to that person outside of Steamgifts. That's only happened a few times, but it's rewarding to see them play the game and have fun with it! =)

I wanted to point that I think that it is not an accurate environment to apply the example of the commons. We don't have a limited resource here, and GAs are increasing every year. Yes there are users that abuse of this system, and I don't like that at all. Sgtools is a good system against the worst of them.

On the other hand, the tragedy of the commons it's a biased interpretation on community regulation. Communities works pretty well, and resources became scarce by privatization and overexploitation

http://www.steadystate.org/the-fallacy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

BTW, I can understand almost everything. 400 win no game sent. Whatever. But I can't stand when users that has hundreds of games sent to private groups with 10 members and never do public giveaways, wins one of my public GAs.

Poll is missing "I'm bothered by key harvesters because they reduce my chances to harvest keys!" ☺

But yeah, as much work as it is, the only way to make sure you include only the type of users you want is either whitelist or SG Tools, like others have said. Bloom3D probably said it best:

Eventually you will either accept that they exist and just dont care ... leave like your friends did .... or look for means to avoid them as much as possible SGTools being 1 such way , even tho i dont really like the thing .

Of course, then you end up becoming one of the users that "created all of their own giveaways for closed steam groups with a very limited amount of members." So, there really is no perfect solution.

i found that the best option is to stop making giveaways, or:

drop games you don't care about in public,
give games you like to your whitelist,

each time someone in your whitelist disappoints you, remove them and try again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First off, I had some trouble answering the poll since I think option 1 and 2 are basically the same if you are happy with the status quo.

Then, to the real subject matter, giving a leecher´s point of view. Well, you might not think of me as a leecher once you´ve read through the whole message but I´d certainly be interested in knowing how many would, if they looked at my statistics alone.

I´m a level 4 but I didn't start out as one. I became a member after seeing a steam game review where the writer said he had won his game from here. And I just didn't get it. I signed up, entered some giveaways, didn't win and then I just abandoned the site. For some reason I re-entered much later, suddenly understood the idea and now I love the concept. Just like many have said, I think steamgifts is simply the best giveaway site there is, it just works, and there is little financial motivations in it, it is firstly about GIFTING and only secondly about GETTING.

So, why am I a leecher? Because I also take pleasure in simply entering many giveaways, just as any person might enjoy entering the lottery. "What if I win, wouldn´t that be great?" And unfortunately I have won, many times, and apparently too many times, by someones standards, because I´ve been blacklisted 4 times and I don´t have the expertise to find out by who or for what reason.

I was also shocked when I gifted games myself and discovered how some winners already had a butt load of winnings. My first instinct was to blacklist them. But why should I? Would it be fair to penalize someone for being lucky? Or even for actively trying to be lucky, by entering as many giveaways as possible? Or by setting MY rules what they should do with THEIR winnings, such as demanding that they play them? (By the way, I know nothing about sgtools or the sorts but isn´t it totally possible that a game, for example a children´s game, is actually being played through the steam family sharing, on the child´s steam account, making the linked steamgifts account falsely look like it is collecting dust?)

I own a lot of games, 400+ in steam and more elsewhere, but adulthood doesn´t allow me to spend much time with them. They are mostly from humblebundles and other charity bundles so I don´t ever feel that I need to play them. They have already given me pleasure through the act of getting them. Eventually, my plan is to unload many such keys here but I haven´t managed to, and it certainly has to do with this stupid idea of "who is worthy?" Likewise, with steamgift games that I´ve won, I try to make time to play my winnings as soon as possible, so as not to offend the generous gifter but such pressure is certainly taking something away from my personal gaming pleasure.

It´s all a bit silly, when you really think of it, isn´t it?

Make use of the whitelist. I make my best giveaways for higher level users but soon I'm going to do a whitelist recruitment where the parameters are either have a generous CV ratio or if you're low level, low cv, have a high percentage of games played. I don't mind a broke person who can't give back winning as long as they play the game. But leechers/bots that just take games and farm them for cards annoy me.

If you care to give to someone who also shares a lot to others (this is close to trading)... been there, done that. People with better "ratio" are not more deserving than others. You can not know how costly it is for every particular person to give gifts and most importantly, what does it mean for them; same for receiving gifts. You will never know people's stories - and their statistic numbers can confuse you.

Methods such as using level restrictions and filters will always let in your GAs someone who you didn't plan to, and also restrict from your GA someone else who you didn't want to restrict. "Increasing the probability to get a better winner"(e.g. with higher ratio) essentially solves nothing. It will not make you happy. Will only make your gifts stink - your restricted giveaways are not better than someone else's group giveaways. No use in trying to judge who is deserving by such simplistic measures.

If your gifts getting played is important for you, you can try giving them away in "playing" groups, there are a few of these groups on SG for different tastes and approaches. Unfortunately these groups are small and don't include whole potential of playing SG users. Playing wins doesn't significantly correlate to high ratio. Not that you yourself care to appreciate others' efforts and play wins, though, but this at least can change.

A lot of users think of all this after spell of the first naive enthusiasm and euphoria gets broken, when looking at their winners and checking what happened to their past gifts. Don't stop thinking and understanding what are the most important thing for you, deeply and sincerely, to choose the best actions which would satisfy you. Who knows, maybe the best for you is indeed leaving SG. Or maybe you would come up with changing your own views on gifting and winning. Either way it is better not to have any expectations regarding other people, but look into yourself.

As some have said, your best bet if some of these things bother you is to use SGTools, or join a group that has certain guidelines. If you want the public to see the SGTools games, then create a public giveaway of something halfway decent (and/or new and/or unbundled) and link to your SGTools-protected private giveaway. I've done this before so that "reads the forums" isn't a pseudo-requirement to win. Then you can come up with whatever rules you want to try to increase the chances of the game going to somebody you'd like to see win.

If you're worried about game collectors, then set a max limit for steam library size.
If you're worried about win collectors, then set a max number of steam wins.
If you're worried about people not giving back at all, then set a level restriction.
If you're worried about people who only give back to their groups and whitelist, then set a minimum percentage of group-only giveaways.

Et cetera, et cetera.

For me, I don't care too much who wins my crappy bundle games, but for a decent giveaway, I tend to share them with my whitelist, groups that require playing wins, or at least some basic SGTools rules to weed out rule-breakers and/or collectors who will just idle my game at best.

Good luck!

You are right, I agree with you there are problems. Although the intentions sound good I don't think they will have the desired result. There are too many junk games, some created just to be given away..

I would just add a Captcha for every action and see what happens with the bots.

In the end I find it more efficient to work and pay the developers, it can be really hard for small ones, and those are the ones who risk making original games.

If I was a member of the elites who ruled the place, well, I would restrict everything to elites, even garbage, but in case of garbage, I wouldn't even allow in the first place, so that means people will get only what is not given away via bundles or promotions. Its a better case where quality control can finally defeat trash devs and "poor indie guys who cant spend money for promotions", meaning only the best and the richest people can giveaway stuff and win in the first place.

Making balance between the poor and the elite? Pathetic, you shouldn't give "poor people" a chance, no matter who they are. Elites ensure the best goods and the best quality, while the poor can't. Let them rot in garbage flood of asset flips.

Oh wait, the elite and vs poor case is going to be not the best solution, right? It would be the case of "massive user rebellions" to change it. But well, poll already says that most people would like to leave as it is, but there's still those who want a "ultra-capitalistic" system, where only the rich can get the required services, while the poor are forced to do jobs for them. What a beautiful world we are living in.

Note, I, like many people, giveaway stuff that is bundled, have spare stuff for, or simply not needed. When it comes to AAA games, well, that's on user choice.